State Green Party Press Release

Rhode Island Green Party

Segal Releases Housing Program

GREEN PARTY OF R.I.
Press Release- For immediate release- September 12, 2002
Contact: David Segal, (401) 270-6443

SEGAL RELEASES HOUSING PROGRAM

David Segal, Green Party candidate for Ward One City Council (College Hill/ Fox Point ), has proposed a comprehensive plan to maintain, and provide additional, affordable housing.

The proposal includes:

-Compelling universities to provide more on-campus housing. Students can, on average, afford to pay higher rents then can non-students. When universities provide insufficient housing, they force local residents to compete with students for housing, in a battle that drives up rents, and in which students tend to come out on top, forcing others out of their neighborhoods. In particular, Brown's residency requirement has become more lax in recent years, with the support of certain East Side landlords who realized they could make more money if students lived in their housing. This must change.

-Linking subsidies and tax breaks on high-end housing developments to the provision of affordable housing units. According to Segal, "Those to whom Providence gives rights to lucrative developments should give back in return. We desperately need housing our residents can actually afford to occupy. We don't need luxury housing, by definition."

-Generally making more accessible tax breaks for those who build affordable housing.

-Building prefabricated homes to put on our hundreds of vacant lots. Prefab housing is cheaper than on-site housing by on the order of a third. We can implement programs for its construction within Providence, providing jobs, and then sell the homes to the community at reasonable prices.

-The Mayor and City Council must create a task force to study the impact of rent stabilization on Providence. Ideally, the city can come up with a plan that leaves room for reasonable profit for landlords, while ensuring that Providence residents will not be faced with ridiculous rent increases year after year. Boston and Cambridge implemented rent control when they were going through a conversion to a new economy, similar to what we see in Providence today. Those cities, like Providence, house many students who can afford higher rents than local residents. Under rent control, Cambridge landlords made a 5-6% annual yield on their investment. Control was abolished in Massachusetts in 1994 by a statewide referendum on a 51% vote, but there is increasingly talk about the possibility of its return, as good housing is increasingly out of reach for residents there. (Voters who actually lived in MA cities with rent control continued to support it, during the 1994 vote and afterwards.)

Property tax relief, by finding alternative sources of revenue, including: --Money in lieu of taxes directly from universities. They currently donate no money to Providence, despite precedents set elsewhere. (Yale donates $2million a year to New Haven, and provides millions of dollars in other services as well.) --Pressure the state to allow the inception of a 1% income tax on the wealthiest of Providence's residents --Institute a 1% transfer tax on property sales of over $200,000. --Demand of the state that Providence retain a percentage of the sales taxes on purchases in the city. Providence is in its current financial predicament largely because government-owned property here is not taxed. Yet Providence provides the funding to maintain the city's infrastructure and services that facilitate the functioning of the state government. The state must indicate its appreciation of Providence's contribution.

According to Segal, "Providence's property taxes are outrageously high and regressive, as they are largely passed down to tenants in the form of exorbitant rent increases year after year. We must find new sources of revenue."

Segal also supports the creation of a Landlord-Tenant Relations Department. "The inception of a landlord/tenant relations office would help prevent abuses on the part of landlords at time when the housing market is clearly to their advantage. In addition, Providence tenants will have an ally in the city to address their grievances and to help them navigate through the confusing housing and rental laws."